Frans Snyders
, Flemish, 1579-1657
Title
A Banquet PieceDatelate 1620s
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions
92.3 x 156.1 cm
Credit LineBequeathed, Sir Hugh Lane, 1918
Object numberNGI.811
DescriptionA student of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Hendrick van Balen, Snyders was the leading Flemish artist in the ?elds of still-life and animal painting. During a career that lasted about 50 years, he produced an enormous oeuvre, of which more than 300 paintings and about 100 drawings have survived. Snyders had a large workshop to assist with the production of his still lifes and hunting scenes and had an enormous in?uence on still-life painting in Antwerp. He occasionally collaborated with Rubens. This sophisticated banquet-piece depicts an impressive array of fresh fruits, a reminder that Antwerp was renowned as a marketplace for exotic fruit and vegetables in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The sumptuous display appears to celebrate wealth and abundance for its own sake, while the expensive metalware and the relatively large size of the canvas suggest that it may have been intended to decorate an aristocratic dining room. Snyders was able to demand enviably high prices for his work from noble patrons.
March 2016
ProvenanceBequeathed, Sir Hugh Lane, 1918 Exhibition HistoryFlemish Art 1300-1700, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1953-1954
Centenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, October - December 1964
The Object Observed. Four Centuries of European Still Life Painting, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 11 February - 2 May 2010
Label TextA student of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Hendrick van Balen, Frans Snyders was the leading Flemish artist in the fields of still-life and animal painting. During a career that lasted about 50 years, he produced an enormous oeuvre of which more than three hundred paintings and about one hundred drawings have survived. Snyders had a large workshop to assist with the production of his still lifes and hunting scenes. He had an enormous influence on still-life painting in Antwerp. This sophisticated banquet piece depicts an impressive array of fresh fruits and celebrates wealth and abundance for its own sake.